More on Right of Way’s Stencil action

Here is another article about the recent rightofway.org memorial stencil action.

From The Atlantic Cities:What We Can Do About Kids Killed by Cars
By: Sarah Goodyear
October 15th, 2013photo by: Right of Way

It’s a biological imperative: We respond more emotionally to the deaths of children than we do to the deaths of middle-aged or old people. When kids lose their lives in preventable ways, whether from disease or violence, it makes us mad. And sometimes, it makes us do something.

In the 1940s and 50s, polio epidemics in the United States paralyzed and killed thousands of children, galvanizing research and later implementation of a vaccination protocol on an unprecedented scale. More recently, it was the sight of the bodies of children killed by chemical weapons in Syria that spurred a fresh round of international pressure to intervene. The massacre of first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 reignited the national debate over guns.

Another example comes from the Netherlands. There, in the 1970s, the rising number of children killed in traffic crashes – in 1971, 450 children died on the streets and roads — led to a mass protest movement pressuring the government to create protected bicycle infrastructure and reduce the dominance of cars. The movement was called “Stop de Kindermoord,” or “Stop the Child Murder,” taking its name from an article by journalist Vic Langenhoff, whose own child was killed in a road crash.